The latest figures show December was another month of steady, moderate job growth. But for many people still struggling with long-term unemployment, the situation hasn't actually changed much at all.
For Alecia Warthen, the last eight months have been painfully stagnant.
She was the first person in her family to finish college, after growing up in one of the roughest sections of Brooklyn. She had earned an accounting degree and worked as a bookkeeper for most of the last decade.
Then she lost her job with the City of New York last April, and she's now telling local grocery stores she'll do anything for a job — mop floors, stock shelves, bag groceries.
One morning she stopped by a Foodtown grocery store in the Bronx. She put in an application a few weeks before, but hadn't heard back. The man she spoke with immediately shook his head at her inquiry.
"They just closed one of my other Foodtown stores, and we're absorbing their help right now. So I have nothing open," he said.
"This is sad. This is so sad." Warthen said as she made her way back through the doors. "I'm going back home. Enough."
Warthen says she's applied for more than 100 jobs since her layoff and has had only four interviews so far. She's tried making clothes and curtains to sell — until her sewing machine broke. She even peddled homemade body lotions and home-cooked meals. But nothing's helped.
One Of Millions
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Warthen, 43, is used to taking care of her own problems. She raised six kids in the Bronx as a single mom and always had a job. Now, she and the three children who are still in the house are living on food stamps and $400 a week in unemployment insurance.
"I've always tried to aim high for myself," says Warthen, perched on her 11-year-old daughter's small, pink bed. "Instill the same values in my kids and stuff, and — just to think that everything has come down to this makes you feel like you just went to school for nothing. For nothing."
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